I underwent pangs such as had not been mine since away back yonder in August of 1914, in the time of the sack of Belgium, when the Germans locked up five of us for a day and a night in a cow stable where no self-respecting cow would voluntarily have stayed, and, then sent us by train under guard on a three-day journey into Germany, yet all the while kept right on telling us we were not prisoners but guests of the German Army. And at the end of the third day we reached the unanimous conclusion among ourselves that the only outstanding distinction we could see, from where we sat, between being prisoners of the German Army and guests of the German Army was that from time to time they did feed the prisoners. For throughout the journey the eight of us--since by now our little party had grown--lived rather simply and frugally and, I might say, sketchily on rations consisting of one loaf of soldiers' bread, one bottle of mineral water and a one-pound pot of sour and rancid honey which must have emanated in the first place from a lot of very morbid, low-minded bees. However, in those exciting days there were many little moving distractions about to keep one from brooding o'ermuch on thoughts of lacking provender. I boast not, but merely utter a verity, when I state that every time I shook myself I shifted the center of population. Where we had been the lesser wild life of midcontinental Europe abounded. In the matter of a distinction which had come to me utterly without solicitation or effort on my part I have no desire to brag, but in justice to myself--and my boarders--I must add that at that moment, of all the human beings in Central Europe, I was the most densely inhabited. My companions scratched along, doing fairly well, too; but I led the field--I was so much roomier than any one of them was. But here aboard this Pullman on this, the dedicatory day of my self-imposed martyrdom, I could not lose myself as I had on that former historic occasion in the ardor of chasing the small game of the country. By four o'clock in the afternoon I could appreciate the sensations of a conch shell on a parlor whatnot. I had a feeling that if anyone were to press his ear up against me he would hear a murmuring sound as of distant sea waves. Yet, mark you, I held bravely out, fighting still the good fight. This, then, was my dinner, if such it might in truth be called: Clear soup, a smallish slice of rare roast beef cut shaving thin, gluten bread sparsely buttered, a cloud of watercress no larger than a man's hand, another raw apple and a bit of domestic cheese--nothing rich, nothing exotic, no melting French _fromages_, no creamy Danish pastries. Only when I reached my demi-tasse, which I took straight, did I permit myself a touch of luxury. I lit my cigar with a genuine imported Swedish parlor match.